Near death & your plan B

Hey, Kody here.

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Personal update: My family and I almost died yesterday.

While driving through Montana on our home after an “early Christmas” visit with family in Utah, we hit a patch of ice on a tight curve, spun out of control, flew off the shoulder, rolled the minivan and managed to take out 4 fence posts before flipping right side up again. Thankfully all 4 of us are perfectly fine - nothing worse than a couple bruises and a few lost toys.

Then we arrived home to find our house at 40 degrees Fahrenheit - our furnace is broken. Oh yeah, and the few-month-old dishwasher leaked water all over the kitchen floor so it’s also probably broken.

Despite all this, we’re just beyond grateful for the countless ways God is watching over us and sending so many miracles.

In honor of almost dying, I thought I’d share a habit example this week about keeping habits from dying!

habit example

What’s as classic as Christmas itself?

When your habits die the moment holidays hit.

Whether it’s spring break, summer vacation, or Christmastime - why do we default to a complete surrender of routines?

Habits are deeply related to cues - things like:

• location, 
• time of day, 
• people you’re with, 
• emotions… 
• even smells!

Cues are triggers that keep us doing good habits (or get us stuck in bad ones).

When your schedule, location, or the people you’re with suddenly change for a couple days (or weeks), your normal cues are either changed or gone completely.

So no wonder your habits vanish with them!

But what if you had a more doable plan B? 

Imagine your habit… lite edition.

During the holidays:

• Instead of reading 30 mins, read 5.
• Instead of exercising an hour, go 10 minutes. 
• Rather than listing 10 gratitudes, do 2.

You get the idea.

”But Kody, why not just take a break entirely?”

You totally can! Just remember it’s wayyy harder to restart a habit than to keep it going… even if it’s a tiny plan B version of your habit.

It seems like nothing. But factually it’s something. 

Consistency is consistency, no matter how small.

try it

So before the holidays hit and your habits die, pick an uber simple way to keep them going.

Plan to do it immediately after waking up, since that’s possibly the only consistent cue to trigger your habit while on vacation.

(Otherwise you’ll likely get lost in the activities of the day and forget)

inspiration

“10% of something is better than 100% of nothing.”

- Christopher Peña (one of my best friends)

actual quote from my 3 year old 😂

“I’m not purple… I’m 26!”

Thanks for reading!

- Kody

P.S. Dedicating this week’s song to all the many friends, family, and complete strangers who have helped us in countless ways over the last 24 hours. Thank you all!

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